San Francisco Symphony Director Michael Tilson Thomas waits backstage prior to his entrance at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall on 9/19/07 in San Francisco, CA. Photo by Michael Maloney / San Francisco ... more

Photo: Michael Maloney

Jet lag? Symphony takes glorious flight

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Here's something you probably don't want to do if you're a fiddle player or, let's say, an international conductor. It can't be too much fun to come off a whirlwind tour of Europe and then - still reeling a bit from jet lag - turn around and open your home season amid all the festive trappings of a gala concert.

But Michael Tilson Thomas and the members of the San Francisco Symphony are pros, and the performances during Wednesday night's opening gala in Davies Symphony Hall - delayed for two weeks while the orchestra went gallivanting around the summer festivals of the Old World - showed no sign of strain or fatigue.

Quite the opposite, in fact. In a well-chosen program, the orchestra sounded robust and alert, playing with all the flair of an ensemble eager to get into the swing of a new season.

Thomas was on his game, conducting with his best blend of precision and spontaneity. Even soprano Renée Fleming, the starry guest artist, sounded splendid in music of Ravel, Gounod and Puccini, her gooey vocal mannerisms rearing up only occasionally in performances that were otherwise lustrous and free.

The result was one of the most enjoyable and vivid gala concerts the orchestra has offered in years. Maybe this late-start ploy needs to be trotted out more often.

Parts of the evening's success could be traced to the orchestra's just-completed tour to festivals in the United Kingdom, Germany and Switzerland.

Some of the repertoire - including the opening triptych of short works by Aaron Copland, Ruth Crawford Seeger and John Adams, and the final encore from Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin" - had been road-tested during the recent tour and showed signs of having been finely honed in the process.

Beginning the evening with the trio of American curtain-raisers, like an elegantly arrayed tray of hors d'oeuvres, was a programming masterstroke (you can just imagine how it went down in Europe), and the orchestra rose to the challenge with superbly focused playing. The stirring, grandiose brass-and-drum strains of Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man" gave way to the beautifully dissonant counterpoint of Crawford Seeger's Andante for Strings, an orchestral adaptation of one movement from her magnificent String Quartet of 1931.

And close on the heels of those two came Adams' "Short Ride in a Fast Machine," with its rambunctious rhythms and exuberant scoring to suggest how "The Rite of Spring" would have sounded if only the young Stravinsky had known the music of Steve Reich. Thomas led a performance that was as celebratory as it was inviting.

Fleming spread her visit across both halves of the program, relegating the heavy lifting of Ravel's "Shéhérazade" to the early part of the evening and saving a couple of gorgeously rendered Puccini gems for later.

The Ravel emerged in long, luminous phrases, and the orchestra supported Fleming with a well-judged mix of voluptuousness and rhythmic clarity. Flutist Tim Day offered brightly insinuating solo playing.

Fleming gave an encore before intermission - a sparkly rendition of the Jewel Song from Gounod's "Faust" - then returned during the second half for Puccini: strong-toned, emotionally focused accounts of "Vissi d'arte" from "Tosca" and "O mio babbino caro" from "Gianni Schicchi."

After that, it was all over but the dancing, so Thomas sent the gala guests off to the parquet with a few choice bits of Russian dance music. There was a handful of excerpts from Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet" - not, oddly enough, the ones listed in the program, which left even the maestro shuffling pages of his score in evident perplexity - and then the Polonaise from "Eugene Onegin" to put everyone in a festive mood.